1. Technology Field
The present invention relates to a data processing method for a rewritable non-volatile memory module, and a memory controller and a memory storage device using the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital cameras, cell phones, and MP3 players have undergone rapid growth in recent years, so that consumer demands for storage media have also rapidly increased. Since a rewritable non-volatile memory (for example, a flash memory) has characteristics such as data non-volatility, low power consumption, small volume, and non-mechanical structure, etc., it is suitable for various aforementioned portable multimedia devices.
Typically, the rewritable non-volatile memory includes a plurality of physical erasing units, and each physical erasing unit includes a plurality of physical programming units. Therein, a physical programming unit is the minimum unit for writing data. Accordingly, when the size of the data to be written is smaller than the capacity of the physical programming unit, a memory control circuit generally fills a pad value, e.g. “0”, in bits of the physical programming unit where the data is not written in, such that the entire physical programming unit is used as an unit for a programming operation. However, when transmitting such pad value to the rewritable non-volatile memory for the programming operation, the time for performing a write command would additionally increased. Besides, a host system creates and maintains system data (e.g. a file allocation table) in a portion of storing addresses in a storage device to manage storage spaces of the entire storage device and records regularly constant specific values (such as “0”) in a portion fields in the system data. Thus, the memory control circuit would repeatedly write and read the constant specific values. However, as the capacity of the physical programming unit becomes larger, the time required to perform the programming operation also increases. How to effectively process the data to be written to shorten the necessary time has become one of the major issues to technicians in this field.